Mega Gardevoir ex Special Illustration Rare

In every other universe, this would be the big one. Gardevoir is always incredibly popular, and Mega Gardevoir is legendary in the trading card game. But a Mega Gardevoir ex that looks this good? This is the first ever Pokémon card from artist Raita Kazama, who has previously done excellent packaging design for the TCG. And thankfully it’s not his last, given he’s already designed a Cresselia for the Japanese Mega Diancie ex starter set.

I just can’t get over how beautiful this is. At first you don’t even notice the regular Gardevoir, eyes closed, reclining in the foreground, let alone the Ralts and Kirlia cartwheeling around the Mega form. It is, I think, my all-time favorite Pokémon card.

And it’s damned powerful, too. Overflowing Wishes lets you search your deck and pull out a Psychic Energy for every benched pocket monster you have, and then delivers Mega Symphonia, an attack that does 50 damage for every single one of those Energies on all those cards! Load your bench with a bunch of Psychic Pokémon, do a couple of rounds of loading them with Energy, and you’ve got yourself a 550 attack! Madness. And given it has a mighty 360 HP, that’s not an improbably scenario at all.

So how much for this extraordinary card? Well, if you pick up the regular version of the ex, it’ll be a princely $1.05. The Super Rare version is a bit pricier at $12. But this version? That’ll be $322 please. And it’s not even close to the most expensive version…